Nighttime Opening of Parking Lots in Nowon-gu Receives Positive Response from Residents

Published 19 Feb.2020 08:32(KST)

Secured 460 Parking Spaces with 13 Additional Sites Including Schools, Religious and Distribution Facilities... Targeting 500 More Spaces This Year Focusing on Distribution and Religious Facilities

Nighttime Opening of Parking Lots in Nowon-gu Receives Positive Response from Residents

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Jong-il] Nowon-gu (Mayor Oh Seung-rok) announced that the nighttime opening project of attached parking lots, which is being promoted to alleviate parking difficulties in residential areas such as apartments, is achieving great results.

Most of the apartments in Nowon-gu, which account for 83% of all housing, were built in the early 1990s and have almost no underground parking lots. At night, parking spaces are packed not only within the complexes but also on the access roads.

However, creating parking lots is not easy. This is because land acquisition costs are high and securing land is difficult. The district focused on parking spaces in large distribution facilities such as schools, department stores, churches, and office buildings scattered throughout the city.

The parking lots of these facilities are congested during the day but have many empty spaces at night. Since March last year, after actively appealing to schools, 13 places have expressed their willingness to participate within a year until this month, securing an additional 460 parking spaces. These include 9 schools such as Nowon Middle School and 4 large distribution facilities such as E-Mart Traders.

Since it costs about 150 million KRW to create one parking space in Seoul, including land acquisition, this has resulted in a budget saving effect of 69 billion KRW in the past year alone.

Last year, the district focused most on opening school parking lots. Nowon-gu has 101 schools, including 94 elementary, middle, and high schools and 7 universities.

Most schools were negative about nighttime opening due to concerns about student safety and management difficulties, so alternatives were proposed. These include strict adherence to designated parking times and improvement of parking facilities to ensure student safety.

The parking lot opening hours are from 6 p.m. on weekdays to 7:30 a.m. the next day, and 24 hours on weekends and holidays. Vehicles that do not comply will be towed immediately.

Additionally, the district is responsible for facility improvements for parking lot use, such as floor paving and painting, installation of automatic entry gates and CCTV to allow access only to registered vehicles. All parking fee income is transferred to the schools.

Furthermore, schools participating in the project receive expanded incentives such as educational expense subsidies in addition to facility improvement costs.

The parking fee is 14,000 KRW per month, which is 30% cheaper than nighttime resident-priority parking zones. Considering that the monthly parking fee for public parking lots is 100,000 KRW, this is quite economical. In the case of Hancheon Middle School, the response from residents is so high that applications close on the same day.

The district aims to secure an additional 500 parking spaces by expanding the project to religious facilities this year and is also promoting a plan to utilize resident-priority parking spaces that are empty during the daytime.

The district has secured 1,000 parking spaces by promoting nighttime opening of idle facility parking lots in the area and is opening them to residents. Specifically, 309 spaces at 10 religious facilities, 268 spaces at 11 schools, 264 spaces at 4 distribution facilities, and 159 spaces at 17 other public institutions and general buildings.

Mayor Oh Seung-rok said, “Opening nighttime parking lots in large facilities such as schools contributes to solving urban parking difficulties and spreading the sharing economy without additional costs,” and added, “We will strive to have more facilities participate.”